27. Torgan
TORGAN
They come to our Hall because Pa refuses to set foot in theirs.
The Duke. Princeton. Two lawyers dressed in city black. Ma receives them with courtesy so exact that my shoulders climb toward my ears. She could cut a throat more warmly.
At the long table sit Pa, Ma, Lissy, Brynna, Noemi and me. The Crown auditor waits near the fire with his gray ledger open on his knee, looking harmless.
He is not harmless.
My sisters are up in the gallery. Mirelle sits between Ysolde and Saskia with her hands folded neatly in her lap.
She agreed to come because she was told Caden would speak.
The fog has left her agreeable, and lately a little curious about the male who leaves badly carved birds at our gate every morning.
Caden sits at the far end of the gallery bench with a careful space between them.
Is this cruel, making her sit through it? Ma says no. Noemi says she has a right to hear it. I still don't know.
The Duke settles into his chair and folds his hands. "Lord Garran. These raids upon my family's property have caused considerable disruption."
"Good," Pa says.
One of the lawyers shifts in his seat. Princeton reaches for the wine. Does he know what's coming? He can't. He walked in here believing this was about money, and he's already reaching for a drink at my father's table.
"Sit down," Pa says.
Princeton had only risen halfway. He sits.
Pa looks down the table. "Mistress Sunfell."
Lissy stands.
She has left the muslin rolled. Instead she lays the original letters across the table one at a time, the way she lays out pattern pieces. Is she frightened? If she is, nobody in this room would know it.
"My shop received an offer in the spring," she says. "So did Arabella's bakery, June's tavern, Noemi's spell shop, the cobbler, the chandlery and the flower stall."
The Duke watches her with mild interest, and the interest stays mild right until she sets the Tanner's Row address down in front of him.
"The offers came from an agent working inside your warehouse."
His gaze sharpens.
"At the same time," she continues, "our suppliers were made to sell their goods at Voss prices or lose the docks.
Those costs came down to us." She lays out Arabella's receipts, then June's accounts, then the shipping records.
"You made our businesses more expensive to run.
Then you offered to buy the buildings for less than they were worth. "
The Duke glances at Pa. "You have allowed a dressmaker to conduct your financial inquiry?"
"Dressmaker," Lissy says. "Not seamstress. Thank you."
Princeton makes a quiet, impatient sound. Lissy hears it.
So do I.
"And no," she says. "Lady Brynna conducted the financial inquiry."
She sits. Brynna stands.
Brynna takes them through the dock stamps, the false fees, the shipping records and the property purchases. Every number has a source. Every source has a copy already in Crown hands. The lawyers write until their fingers must ache, and the Duke barely moves.
"The pattern holds across three years," Brynna finishes. "The warehouse accounts connect the pressure at the docks to the property purchases directly." She sets down her final page. "The Crown has the originals."
The Duke allows the silence to stretch.
Then he gives away the money.
"Miscalculated fees. Clerks exceeding their authority.
An agent pursuing purchases with regrettable enthusiasm.
" He waves one hand. "If irregularities occurred, my house will make the injured parties whole.
Restitution. Revised schedules." His attention moves to Lissy.
"You will find us generous, Miss Sunfell. "
"I would rather find you honest."
Ma's mouth twitches. The Duke's does not.
"Money is only money," he says. "It was never worth this theater."
Of course it wasn't, not to him. He'll hand over gold all day long if it keeps us away from Mirelle. Every person at this table knows there is a second matter, and the Duke believes we can't prove it.
At this moment, he's right.
So let him prove it for us.
I stand.
Noemi gave me an empty bottle from the same glassmaker who supplied the stolen vial. The same pale glass. The same narrow neck. It isn't evidence.
It's bait.
I set it down on the table.
Look at it.
Princeton's eyes go to it before he can stop them.
"The second matter," I say.
"Torgan." The Duke's voice turns gentle. "I heard about your sister's unfortunate episode. You have my deepest sympathies. Young hearts sometimes—"
"Yes," I say. "Young hearts. You told me that already."
I keep my attention on the Duke and Princeton at the edge of my sight. He isn't looking at the bottle anymore. He is trying very hard not to.
"A vial like this one went missing from my coat at Saskia's wedding," I say. "I bought the draught in Starling Vale half a year ago."
Noemi looks straight ahead. Lissy does too.
"That shame is mine. My family knows it. The Crown knows it. I've answered every question anyone has put to me." My jaw still aches where Caden hit me, and I'm glad of it. "Noemi examined my sister. She identified the effects of her own working."
"A village spellworker's opinion," the Duke says.
"A licensed witch's statement," Noemi corrects him calmly. "Supported by my formula records, my sales ledger and my inventory."
The Duke turns his eyes on her. Noemi smiles at him.
He looks back at me.
"The draught was given to Mirelle after the wedding and before she ended her engagement," I say. "We know what was stolen. We know when it was used. We know why somebody wanted that courtship finished." I put both hands flat on the table. "What we don't have is the hand that poured it."
"Then you have nothing." The gentleness is gone.
"You have a bottle that isn't even the stolen bottle.
A witch's opinion. An accusation you are too frightened to make out loud.
" He leans back. "Finish it or don't, Lord Torgan.
But understand what finishing it will cost you when you cannot prove a word of it. "
"He isn't going to finish it," Princeton says.
Those are the first words out of him since Pa told him to sit.
Keep talking.
He leans back, copying his father and getting it slightly wrong.
Two days of Crown seals have done something to him.
Two days of officials asking him questions instead of accepting his answers.
He needs to be the cleverest male in the room, and worse than that, he needs the rest of us to know he is.
"He can't finish it," Princeton says. "Anybody could have taken that vial.
Two hundred guests. Servants. Clan cousins.
Half the gathering drunk on mead." He smiles.
"You'd need a witness who put me at the coat rack.
Then you'd have to carry that bottle from the rack to Mirelle's elderflower cordial at the welcome supper.
You'd need to prove I poured it before she drank. "
His smile widens.
"And you can't."
The Hall goes silent.
Did they all hear it? Did the auditor get it down?
Princeton's expression stays satisfied for one heartbeat too long. Then he hears himself.
I never named him. I never mentioned the coat rack. I never mentioned a welcome supper, and nobody in this room said one word about elderflower cordial.
Ma rises slowly.
"Nobody at this table said you were near the coats," she says. Her voice is quiet. It reaches the gallery anyway. "Nobody told you what my daughter drank. Nobody mentioned a welcome supper."
Princeton's face changes. Only a little.
Enough.
"I was present," he says. "One remembers a dinner. Anyone would remember…"
"You remembered that you poured the drink," Ma says.
"I said no such thing."
"You did," Caden says.
He comes down the gallery stairs. Princeton looks up at his brother, and for the first time since I have known him, he has nothing ready.
Caden reaches the floor in his plain coat with sawdust on one sleeve. There is always sawdust on one sleeve now, although the things he makes are still terrible.
"I was at the welcome supper," he says. "Princeton poured Mirelle's cordial and my wine. He toasted our happiness."
"Caden," the Duke says. "Sit down."
"No." Caden doesn't look at him. "I thanked him that night, because I've spent fifteen years turning everything my brother does into something kinder than it is.
" His voice thins out, and he keeps going anyway.
"Mirelle ended our engagement two days later.
And now this room has heard him put himself at the wedding coats and at her cup. "
One of the lawyers gets to his feet. "That proves no administration." He says it to the Duke, not to us.
The auditor opens his little gray ledger. "Not alone," he agrees pleasantly.
Princeton's head turns.
"The archive contains a payment from Lord Princeton's private account to a spell-broker in Valeforth, made the morning after the wedding." The auditor peers over his spectacles. "The notation reads identification and discretion."
Princeton goes white.
"The broker confirms that a young nobleman brought him an unlabelled draught in a pale glass vial and paid to learn what it did. His commitment to discretion weakened considerably once the Crown informed him we had his name."
A witness. A payment. Princeton's own mouth tying the two of them together.
Then the room breaks apart. The lawyers stand. Pa's fist comes down on the table. The Duke turns on his eldest son and every trace of sleepiness goes out of his face.
I barely hear any of it, because Mirelle has come down two steps.
Gods, don't let her do this to herself.
She looks at Princeton with one hand pressed flat against her chest. The potion still holds. No anger comes rushing back because the villain has been named, and no love returns because Caden is standing beneath her.
But she remembers.
"You poured my cup," she says.
Her voice is polite and flat and wrong, and the Hall quiets for her anyway.
"You made a joke about the cordial. I laughed." She frowns, concentrating. "I know I should be angry." Her fingers press harder. "I can't reach it."